I knew a madman…
Prose
I used to know this guy when I was in college. He was blind and he limped. Some freak accident had got him a long time ago. They say if not for him, his daughter would have been killed. His wife had eloped with her lover when their daughter was three and she was all he had ever since. But of course, you’d never get all that from him. I didn’t know it back then either. To me, he was the happiest soul I knew. And to my eternal shame, I thought on occasions that he was in fact, a madman.
At 3:00 AM, we’d be smoking and chatting at the tea shop right outside the Government Hospital (GH), this madman with his dark glasses would walk out the GH’s side gate, cross the road nonchalantly and turn right, walk past us, limping all the way with an old Tamil song on his lips, so loud you could tell from 500 meters away it was him. We ranted about the pathetic education system and the subjects we were flunking on somedays, and cried over failing ‘true’ relationships, and our futures on others. Now when I think back, I can barely remember those conversations but I can clearly remember the madman. 3:00 AM, he’s out, he’s singing, he’s going home.
A few months before college days came to an end, we stopped seeing him. I didn’t miss him but it wasn’t hard to guess what would have happened. I ask the tea-master about him and he tells me that the madman died two months ago. ‘His daughter got married the month before. Good family, good lad. He was elated,’ he says. Master tells me men like him come once in a lifetime and we were lucky. That he misses him around sometimes. Him, and his songs, and his description of things he’d never seen. He lets out a casual laugh but he’s sad, I can tell. I’m sad too.
I found these dark glasses while cleaning my room today that reminded me of him. I thought about my complaints about the slow internet, about the boring TV soaps, the price of fuel, and the mileage of my car. How my issues are all on the surface, while I sulk and actually procrastinate living. And how this one blind madman sat on a mountain of fire yet only let the light come out to the world.
And I thought to myself — If a blind man can have a vision, a stupid man can certainly develop a sense.
